Its Time to Grow Up

Each December I pray for direction from the Lord. I begin looking forward to the coming year and asking God what He wants from me. What does He want to show me? What area of my life do I need to surrender to Him? This word becomes an anchor upon which I hang onto as God sifts and stirs things up in my life. This year the word I heard from the Lord was “grow”. Usually God only tells me one or two words. I think its because He knows I like to control things in my life and the more I know the more I want to do it my own way.

I felt the Lord say that I would be growing in many ways this year. I was going to grow in my understanding of the bible as I studied for my pastors license. My responsibilities at church are going to grow. My husbands business is expanding. There are other ways God wants me to grow in as well. I see that my husband and I are in a season of growth in our marriage. God is allowing us the opportunity to see some things that aren’t as they should be. That when we face challenges, God wants us to allow those challenges to bring us closer together as a couple and closer to God. I also began feeling the Lord stir in me a realization of all He had brought me through in my life. That He was going to use the times of growth in my past to heal me and God was going to use those same seasons of growth in my future to heal others around me as well.

I felt the Lord also ask me to grow in my faith. To trust that He has been at work in my life since the very beginning. I began taking a class called Essentials that walked me through the story of God and how my story and Gods story intersected. God has been growing gifts and passions in me since I was a little girl. In this class I discovered how all my triumphs and disappointments were actually pieces of the puzzle of my life and the mission and purpose God had placed inside of me all along. I realized that when I wanted to look over my life and categorize my good and poor choices as wins or loses, that they actually were moments that were knitted together by God creating this overall theme of who I am. That these moments weren’t times when I was bad or good, but they were necessary moments for the overall picture of me to form.

The Word of God says “A three strand chord can not be easily broken”. The three stands that are talked about here are God, me, and other people in my life. Sometimes that other person is a parent, a spouse, or friend.When we choose to be transparent with ourselves, God, and others around us, thats when true growth begins to happen. There are opportunities during the week where you can join a class or small group and discover who God really is. I believe that the more we know about God, the more we know about ourselves and how He has built each of us. This knowledge is where we can make the greatest impact for the Kingdom. Lets be people who run after growth. God has a plan for you. He wants you to discover who you are, who He is and then walk that out. But we need to be willing to look at ourselves. Willing to see the depth of Gods love for us and then through that love dive into learning. Lets be people who grow. Lets be people who are willing to be disciples so that we may disciples others. So take every opportunity to learn. Join Essentials. Be apart of a small group. Lets be people who are lifelong learners. We will never arrive but lets remember that when we run after growth, we find true faith and love in Jesus.